I Feel You, Clarissa
by WitchcraftAndTrickery
Summary: Jace is overwhelmed by his new feelings for this... Clarissa. Crack fic based on the Sweeney Todd song 'Johanna'. Short and not serious! Update: Now includes the reprise, feat. Valentine, Jonathan and Jace.
1. Chapter 1

_**As Jamie Campbell Bower's being cast as Jace makes me very happy indeed, I thought I would celebrate by comparing two of his most prestigious works.**_

_**No, really, I watched Sweeney Todd and I just had this image and I had to write in down. I don't particularly even know what the following is. Enjoy this piece crack musicalness ;D**_

* * *

Jace looked up at the window of the Institute. He'd woken, needed some air, anything, really, to get out of the church. He'd been somewhere in the gardens when he'd noticed the light in the window, and on further inspection, the red headed figure gazing out of it. When she'd realised who it was watching her, Clary had hurriedly pulled across the curtain, flushed.

Jace grinned, and looked at his feet. He'd never felt this way before, really, about anyone, and he didn't know exactly what it was and it scared the hell out of him. But it was uplifting, it was freeing, and it was terrifying all at the same time, and it was _new_. So new and foreign and exhilarating that he just wanted to sing.

Stepping back into the shadows lest Alec or worse, Maryse, find him, he began whispering under his breath. "I feel you, Clarissa," he sang, half to himself, half to the crimson topped mystery in the lighted window. "I feel you… I was half convinced I'd waken, satisfied enough to dream you – happily I was mistaken," he chuckled in wonder as he remembered the first time he'd seen her, in the club, screaming at the apparent murder she was, unbelievably, witnessing. "Clarissa!" he almost shouted, his mouth splitting into a rare grin as he wandered among the shrubs.

"I'll steal you, Clarissa, I'll steal you…" he breathed, closing his eyes as he imagined the scent of her hair; he'd be holding her, breathing it in, as she made art on her paper.

"I'll steal you, Clarissa, I'll steal you," he repeated, leaning on a small tree. He smirked as he thought of how she had been hidden away, all those years, when she could have been - should have been – learning _their _ways, _their _trades. "Do they think that wards could hide you?" he wondered, shaking his head. "Even now I'm at your window… I am in the dark beside you, buried sweetly in your scarlet hair!" He felt exhilarated, like nothing he'd ever felt before.

"I feel you, Clarissa," he announced, maybe to himself or maybe to her, he wasn't sure. "And someday I'll steal you. Till I'm with you then, I'm with you there –" He leapt onto the stone bench, eyes wide and transfixed on the window, and sang. "Sweetly buried in your scarlet hair!"

The light in the window clicked off, and the magic faded. Jace stood motionless on the bench, wondering what on earth this almost-mundane had sparked in him.

* * *

_**So, um, yeah, that was basically it. Sorry not sorry.**_

_**I now want to write the reprise. Maybe Valentine could be Sweeney, and Sebastian could be the crazy beggar woman. Yeah!**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**greygirl2358 and Dreamer101 ex oh ex asked for the reprise – yay! So this for them. Enjoy!**_

-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Jace stood outside the window, gazing up at the frame that stood slightly open to the breeze. He was reminded of another time he'd stood in the same position. Back in the Institute, a few days – or maybe weeks, he wasn't sure anymore – after meeting her. Back where was no Valentine, no war, no demon blood, just _hunting_. Simple. Clean. Easy. When the most complicated thing was Clary seeing him, not Clary being his sister.

Clary. She'd changed him so much, and now he had to use that. Jace found his voice lilting the same tune he'd sung all those years ago. "_I feel you, Clarissa,_" he whispered, his boots scuffing the cobbled street. "_I feel you… Did they think that wards could hide you? Even now I'm at your window._" He sighed, and dropped his gaze from her room where he'd been, only minutes before. He turned away, his heart heavy as he began his march. "_I am in the dark beside you… Buried sweetly in your scarlet hair, Clarissa…_"

* * *

Way out of Alicante was Lake Lyn, its mirrored surface reflecting the darkening sky above. On its bank stood Valentine, his expression uncharacteristically thoughtful, his eyes focused on somewhere far beyond the lake.

Something in him wanted Clarissa to be there.

He'd thought, for so many years, that she was Graymark's child. But he had been mistaken. She was _his_, his and Jocelyn's daughter, and though he had finally accepted that Jocelyn was lost to him – lost to a downworlder, he thought, bitterly – there was still a chance that Clarissa, his _daughter_, his most perfect experiment, could join him. Could see that he was righteous.

"_And are you beautiful and pale, with scarlet hair, like her?_" he wondered aloud, almost musing to himself. "_I'd want you beautiful and pale, the way I've dreamed you were… Clarissa,_" he breathed, some strange exhilaration flooding him.

Somewhere on the road from Alicante, the sound was echoed by the tawny-haired figure making his way onward. "_Clarissa…_" murmured Jace, like a mantra.

Valentine had not finished his musings. "_And if you're beautiful, what then, with scarlet hair, like flame?_" he posed, before sighing. "_I think we shall not meet again my little dove, for shame – Clarissa…_"

Jace's voice echoed down the road as surely as his footsteps. "_I'll steal you, Clarissa…_"

"_Goodbye, Johanna,_" Valentine barked, irony cruelly twisting his words into laughter. He knew he'd never see her join him. He had others to thank for that. Others he had once called friends. Family. "_You're gone, and yet you're mine – I'm fine, Clarissa, I'm fine!_"

"_Clarissa…_"

* * *

Alicante was burning. It just didn't know it yet.

And out of the flames came one Sebastian Verlac, a sneer plastered onto his fine features. A demon sneer. But then others appeared, and the sneer dropped, and was replaced by a mask of sheer terror.

"_Smoke! Smoke! Sign of the devil, sign of the devil, city on fire!_" cried the dark haired boy, feigned panic in his smirking eyes. He launched at one of the onlookers, almost screaming. "_Witch! Witch! Smell it sir, an evil smell, every night at the Vespers' bell, smoke that comes from the mouth of hell, city on fire! City on fire!_" And he pointed at the flames beginning to lick at the cobbled buildings as the crowd began to gasp.

Sebastian chuckled darkly to himself as they ran to their burning houses. "_Mischief," _he murmured, grinning._ "Mischief! Mischief!_"

* * *

Valentine was preparing the tools for the ritual. His mind was further away than it ought to have been. "_And if I never hear your voice, my turtle-dove, my dear,_" he muttered, his daughter's face – panic-stricken, he noted sadly – appeared in his mind's eye once again. Clary would never be his, but _this_ – this was his way to prove himself to the Angel. To the Clave. To all the hypocritical scum who had beaten him down for defending them even as they silently hated those he fought against. "_I still have reason to rejoice the way ahead is clear – Clarissa…_"

Jace was closer now. He could feel it. The heavy way ahead, and the pull dragging him backward. "_I feel you, Clarissa,_" he whispered, his hands in fists at his sides.

Valentine could only think of Jocelyn. She had left him. He had loved her, loved her with everything he had, and she had feared him, _hated_ him even, and that was… That was his drive. He would have his vengeance. Not on her; never on her. But on those who had poisoned her mind against him with their lies and pretence. "_And in that darkness when I'm blind with what I can't forget,_" he gasped, looking up across the mirrored lake, "_it's always morning in my mind, my little lamb, my pet – Clarissa…!"_

He pushed his hair back, wondering how it would be different if Clary – his angel child – was the one with him now, rather than Jonathan. His demon boy. But she was untainted by the sins he had been forced to commit for the greater good. "_You stay, Clarissa,_" he sighed, "_the way I dreamed you were – oh look, Clarissa, a star…_"

"_Clarissa,_" breathed Jace as he rested on the roadside for a moment, remembering the scent of her – always peaches, and something metallic that he knew was rune markings. "_Buried sweetly in your scarlet hair…_"

"_A shooting star…!_"

* * *

"_There, there!_" came the cries of Sebastian Verlac as he tore through the city. "_Somebody, somebody, look up there!_" He was pointing to the burning towers, his laughter boiling in his gut as he saw their pathetic faces squirming in fear. "_Didn't I tell you? Smell that air! City on fire!_"

He pounced onto a small family clutching each other, gesturing wildly. "_Quick, Sir, run and tell!_" he implored. "_Go on 'a Mole little ratchet spell – there it is, there it is, the unholy smell, tell it to the Clave and Inquisitor as well! Tell 'em, tell 'em – help, fiend!_" He moved away, still shouting wildly, enjoying his pretence of insanity immensely. "_City on fire! City on fire!_"

He held his sides as he doubled over laughing behind a building. "_Mischief,_" he giggled gleefully to himself, as tears of mirth streamed from his eyes. "_Mischief!_"

* * *

"_And though I'll think of you, I guess, until the day I die,_" mused Valentine, now sitting motionless, waiting, "_I think I miss you less and less as every day goes by – Clarissa…_"

"_Clarissa,_" whispered Jace, still his mantra as he stalked past the trees as he neared the small house in the forest.

"_And you'd be beautiful and pale and look too much like her,_" reasoned Valentine, resignedly. He had to wait. The boy would come, as would she. He knew it. "_If only angels could prevail, we'd be the way we were. Clarissa…"_

"_I feel you, Clarissa!_"

"_Wake up, Clarissa!_" cried Valentine, the sound tearing from him in exhaustion or exasperation, he wasn't sure. "_Another bright red day! We learn, Clarissa, to say – goodbye…_"

Outside the small house, far away from Valentine and the lake, Jace Morgenstern closed his eyes. He thought of Clary. Then he thought of nothing.

"_I'll steal you…_"

-0-0-0-0-0-

_**Bit more wordy. Maybe disproportionately so. Who knows? I enjoyed writing it haha.**_

_**Let me know what you think! Should I make it more parody-like? Or are singing characters mixed with serious writing okay? Sound off and tell me!**_


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